Foreign Affairs July-August 2002 v81 i4 p104
Clash of Globalizations.
by Stanley Hoffmann
© COPYRIGHT 2002 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
A NEW PARADIGM?
What is the state of international relations today? In the
1990s, specialists concentrated on the partial
disintegration of the global order’s traditional foundations:
states. During that decade, many countries, often those
born of decolonization, revealed themselves to be no more
than pseudostates, without solid institutions, internal
cohesion, or national consciousness. The end of
communist coercion in the former Soviet Union and in the
former Yugoslavia also revealed long-hidden ethnic
tensions. Minorities that were or considered themselves
oppressed demanded independence. In Iraq, Sudan,
Afghanistan, and Haiti, rulers waged open warfare against
their subjects. These wars increased the importance of
humanitarian interventions, which came at the expense of
the hallowed principles of national sovereignty and
nonintervention. Thus the dominant tension of the decade
was the clash between the fragmentation of states (and
the state system) and the progress of economic, cultural,
and political integration -- in other words, globalization.
Everybody has understood the events of September 11 as
the beginning of a new era. But what does this break
mean? In the conventional approach to international
relations, war took place among states. But in September,
poorly armed individuals suddenly challenged, surprised,
and wounded the world’s dominant superpower. The
attacks also showed that, for all its accomplishments,
globalization makes an awful form of violence easily
accessible to hopeless fanatics. Terrorism is the bloody
link between interstate relations and global society. As
countless individuals and groups are becoming global
actors along with states, insecurity and vulnerability are
rising. To assess today’s bleak state of affairs, therefore,
several questions are necessary. What concepts help
explain the new global order? What is the condition of the
interstate part of international relations? And what does
the emerging global civil society contribute to world order?
SOUND AND FURY
Two models made a great deal of noise in the 1990s. The
first one -- Francis Fukuyama’s "End of History" thesis --
was not vindicated by events. To be sure, his argument
predicted the end of ideological conflicts, not history itself,
and the triumph of political and economic liberalism. That
point is correct in a narrow sense: the "secular religions"
that fought each other so bloodily in the last century are
now dead. But Fukuyama failed to note that nationalism
remains very much alive. Moreover, he ignored the
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explosive potential of religious wars that has extended to a
large part of the Islamic world.
Fukuyama’s academic mentor, the political scientist
Samuel Huntington, provided a few years later a gloomier
account that saw a very different world. Huntington
predicted that violence resulting from international anarchy
and the absence of common values and institutions would
erupt among civilizations rather than among states or
ideologies. But Huntington’s conception of what constitutes
a civilization was hazy. He failed to take into account
sufficiently conflicts within each so-called civilization, and
he overestimated the importance of religion in the behavior
of non-Western elites, who are often secularized and
Westernized. Hence he could not clearly define the link
between a civilization and the foreign policies of its
member states.
Other, less sensational models still have adherents. The
"realist" orthodoxy insists that nothing has changed in
international relations since Thucydides and Machiavelli: a
state’s military and economic power determines its fate;
interdependence and international institutions are
secondary and fragile phenomena; and states’ objectives
are imposed by the threats to their survival or security.
Such is the world described by Henry Kissinger.
Unfortunately, this venerable model has trouble integrating
change, especially globalization and the rise of nonstate
actors. Moreover, it overlooks the need for international
cooperation that results from such new threats as the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). And
it ignores what the scholar Raymond Aron called the "germ
of a universal consciousness": the liberal, promarket
norms that developed states have come to hold in
common.
Taking Aron’s point, many scholars today interpret the
world in terms of a triumphant globalization that
submerges borders through new means of information and
communication. In this universe, a state choosing to stay
closed invariably faces decline and growing discontent
among its subjects, who are eager for material progress.
But if it opens up, it must accept a reduced role that is
mainly limited to social protection, physical protection
against aggression or civil war, and maintaining national
identity. The champion of this epic without heroes is The
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He
contrasts barriers with open vistas, obsolescence with
modernity, state control with free markets. He sees in
globalization the light of dawn, the "golden straitjacket" that
will force contentious publics to understand that the logic
of globalization is that of peace (since war would interrupt
globalization and therefore progress) and democracy
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Clash of Globalizations.
(because new technologies increase individual autonomy
and encourage initiative).
BACK TO REALITY
These models come up hard against three realities. First,
rivalries among great powers (and the capacity of smaller
states to exploit such tensions) have most certainly not
disappeared. For a while now, however, the existence of
nuclear weapons has produced a certain degree of
prudence among the powers that have them. The risk of
destruction that these weapons hold has moderated the
game and turned nuclear arms into instruments of last
resort. But the game could heat up as more states seek
other WMD as a way of narrowing the gap between the
nuclear club and the other powers. The sale of such
weapons thus becomes a hugely contentious issue, and
efforts to slow down the spread of all WMD, especially to
dangerous "rogue" states, can paradoxically become new
causes of violence.
Second, if wars between states are becoming less
common, wars within them are on the rise -- as seen in the
former Yugoslavia, Iraq, much of Africa, and Sri Lanka.
Uninvolved states first tend to hesitate to get engaged in
these complex conflicts, but they then (sometimes)
intervene to prevent these conflicts from turning into
regional catastrophes. The interveners, in turn, seek the
help of the United Nations or regional organizations to
rebuild these states, promote stability, and prevent future
fragmentation and misery.
Third, states’ foreign policies are shaped not only by realist
geopolitical factors such as economics and military power
but by domestic politics. Even in undemocratic regimes,
forces such as xenophobic passions, economic
grievances, and transnational ethnic solidarity can make
policymaking far more complex and less predictable. Many
states -- especially the United States -- have to grapple
with the frequent interplay of competing government
branches. And the importance of individual leaders and
their personalities is often underestimated in the study of
international affairs.
For realists, then, transnational terrorism creates a
formidable dilemma. If a state is the victim of private actors
such as terrorists, it will try to eliminate these groups by
depriving them of sanctuaries and punishing the states
that harbor them. The national interest of the attacked
state will therefore require either armed interventions
against governments supporting terrorists or a course of
prudence and discreet pressure on other governments to
bring these terrorists to justice. Either option requires a
questioning of sovereignty -- the holy concept of realist
theories. The classical realist universe of Hans
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Morgenthau and Aron may therefore still be very much
alive in a world of states, but it has increasingly hazy
contours and offers only difficult choices when it faces the
threat of terrorism.
At the same time, the real universe of globalization does
not resemble the one that Friedman celebrates. In fact,
globalization has three forms, each with its own problems.
First is economic globalization, which results from recent
revolutions in technology, information, trade, foreign
investment, and international business. The main actors
are companies, investors, banks, and private services
industries, as well as states and international
organizations. This present form of capitalism, ironically
foreseen by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, poses a
central dilemma between efficiency and fairness. The
specialization and integration of firms make it possible to
increase aggregate wealth, but the logic of pure capitalism
does not favor social justice. Economic globalization has
thus become a formidable cause of inequality among and
within states, and the concern for global competitiveness
limits the aptitude of states and other actors to address
this problem.
Next comes cultural globalization. It stems from the
technological revolution and economic globalization, which
together foster the flow of cultural goods. Here the key
choice is between uniformization (often termed
"Americanization") and diversity. The result is both a
"disenchantment of the world" (in Max Weber’s words) and
a reaction against uniformity. The latter takes form in a
renaissance of local cultures and languages as well as
assaults against Western culture, which is denounced as
an arrogant bearer of a secular, revolutionary ideology and
a mask for U.S. hegemony.
Finally there is political globalization, a product of the other
two. It is characterized by the preponderance of the United
States and its political institutions and by a vast array of
international and regional organizations and
transgovernmental networks (specializing in areas such as
policing or migration or justice). It is also marked by private
institutions that are neither governmental nor purely
national -- say, Doctors Without Borders or Amnesty
International. But many of these agencies lack democratic
accountability and are weak in scope, power, and
authority. Furthermore, much uncertainty hangs over the
fate of American hegemony, which faces significant
resistance abroad and is affected by America’s own
oscillation between the temptations of domination and
isolation.
The benefits of globalization are undeniable. But
Friedmanlike optimism rests on very fragile foundations.
For one thing, globalization is neither inevitable nor
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irresistible. Rather, it is largely an American creation,
rooted in the period after World War II and based on U.S.
economic might. By extension, then, a deep and
protracted economic crisis in the United States could have
as devastating an effect on globalization as did the Great
Depression.
Second, globalization’s reach remains limited because it
excludes many poor countries, and the states that it does
transform react in different ways. This fact stems from the
diversity of economic and social conditions at home as
well as from partisan politics. The world is far away from a
perfect integration of markets, services, and factors of
production. Sometimes the simple existence of borders
slows down and can even paralyze this integration; at
other times it gives integration the flavors and colors of the
dominant state (as in the case of the Internet).
Third, international civil society remains embryonic. Many
nongovernmental organizations reflect only a tiny segment
of the populations of their members’ states. They largely
represent only modernized countries, or those in which the
weight of the state is not too heavy. Often, NGOs have
little independence from governments.
Fourth, the individual emancipation so dear to Friedman
does not quickly succeed in democratizing regimes, as
one can see today in China. Nor does emancipation
prevent public institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or the World Trade
Organization from remaining opaque in their activities and
often arbitrary and unfair in their rulings.
Fifth, the attractive idea of improving the human condition
through the abolition of barriers is dubious. Globalization is
in fact only a sum of techniques (audio and
videocassettes, the Internet, instantaneous
communications) that are at the disposal of states or
private actors. Self- interest and ideology, not
humanitarian reasons, are what drive these actors. Their
behavior is quite different from the vision of globalization
as an Enlightenment-based utopia that is simultaneously
scientific, rational, and universal. For many reasons --
misery, injustice, humiliation, attachment to traditions,
aspiration to more than just a better standard of living --
this "Enlightenment" stereotype of globalization thus
provokes revolt and dissatisfaction.
Another contradiction is also at work. On the one hand,
international and transnational cooperation is necessary to
ensure that globalization will not be undermined by the
inequalities resulting from market fluctuations, weak
state-sponsored protections, and the incapacity of many
states to improve their fates by themselves. On the other
hand, cooperation presupposes that many states and rich
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private players operate altruistically -- which is certainly not
the essence of international relations -- or practice a
remarkably generous conception of their long-term
interests. But the fact remains that most rich states still
refuse to provide sufficient development aid or to intervene
in crisis situations such as the genocide in Rwanda. That
reluctance compares poorly with the American enthusiasm
to pursue the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban. What
is wrong here is not patriotic enthusiasm as such, but the
weakness of the humanitarian impulse when the national
interest in saving non-American victims is not self-evident.
IMAGINED COMMUNITIES
Among the many effects of globalization on international
politics, three hold particular importance. The first
concerns institutions. Contrary to realist predictions, most
states are not perpetually at war with each other. Many
regions and countries live in peace; in other cases,
violence is internal rather than state-to-state. And since no
government can do everything by itself, interstate
organisms have emerged. The result, which can be termed
"global society," seeks to reduce the potentially destructive
effects of national regulations on the forces of integration.
But it also seeks to ensure fairness in the world market
and create international regulatory regimes in such areas
as trade, communications, human rights, migration, and
refugees. The main obstacle to this effort is the reluctance
of states to accept global directives that might constrain
the market or further reduce their sovereignty. Thus the
UN’s powers remain limited and sometimes only purely
theoretical. International criminal justice is still only a
spotty and contested last resort. In the world economy --
where the market, not global governance, has been the
main beneficiary of the state’s retreat -- the network of
global institutions is fragmented and incomplete. Foreign
investment remains ruled by bilateral agreements.
Environmental protection is badly ensured, and issues
such as migration and population growth are largely
ignored. Institutional networks are not powerful enough to
address unfettered short-term capital movements, the lack
of international regulation on bankruptcy and competition,
and primitive coordination among rich countries. In turn,
the global "governance" that does exist is partial and weak
at a time when economic globalization deprives many
states of independent monetary and fiscal policies, or it
obliges them to make cruel choices between economic
competitiveness and the preservation of social safety nets.
All the while, the United States displays an increasing
impatience toward institutions that weigh on American
freedom of action. Movement toward a world state looks
increasingly unlikely. The more state sovereignty crumbles
under the blows of globalization or such recent
developments as humanitarian intervention and the fight
against terrorism, the more states cling to what is left to
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them.
Second, globalization has not profoundly challenged the
enduring national nature of citizenship. Economic life takes
place on a global scale, but human identity remains
national -- hence the strong resistance to cultural
homogenization. Over the centuries, increasingly
centralized states have expanded their functions and tried
to forge a sense of common identity for their subjects. But
no central power in the world can do the same thing today,
even in the European Union. There, a single currency and
advanced economic coordination have not yet produced a
unified economy or strong central institutions endowed
with legal autonomy, nor have they resulted in a sense of
postnational citizenship. The march from national identity
to one that would be both national and European has only
just begun. A world very partially unified by technology still
has no collective consciousness or collective solidarity.
What states are unwilling to do the world market cannot do
all by itself, especially in engendering a sense of world
citizenship.
Third, there is the relationship between globalization and
violence. The traditional state of war, even if it is limited in
scope, still persists. There are high risks of regional
explosions in the Middle East and in East Asia, and these
could seriously affect relations between the major powers.
Because of this threat, and because modern arms are
increasingly costly, the "anarchical society" of states lacks
the resources to correct some of globalization’s most
flagrant flaws. These very costs, combined with the classic
distrust among international actors who prefer to try to
preserve their security alone or through traditional
alliances, prevent a more satisfactory institutionalization of
world politics -- for example, an increase of the UN’s
powers. This step could happen if global society were
provided with sufficient forces to prevent a conflict or
restore peace -- but it is not.
Globalization, far from spreading peace, thus seems to
foster conflicts and resentments. The lowering of various
barriers celebrated by Friedman, especially the spread of
global media, makes it possible for the most deprived or
oppressed to compare their fate with that of the free and
well- off. These dispossessed then ask for help from
others with common resentments, ethnic origin, or
religious faith. Insofar as globalization enriches some and
uproots many, those who are both poor and uprooted may
seek revenge and self-esteem in terrorism.
GLOBALIZATION AND TERROR
Terrorism is the poisoned fruit of several forces. It can be
the weapon of the weak in a classic conflict among states
or within a state, as in Kashmir or the Palestinian
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territories. But it can also be seen as a product of
globalization. Transnational terrorism is made possible by
the vast array of communication tools. Islamic terrorism,
for example, is not only based on support for the
Palestinian struggle and opposition to an invasive
American presence. It is also fueled by a resistance to
"unjust" economic globalization and to a Western culture
deemed threatening to local religions and cultures.
If globalization often facilitates terrorist violence, the fight
against this war without borders is potentially disastrous
for both economic development and globalization.
Antiterrorist measures restrict mobility and financial flows,
while new terrorist attacks could lead the way for an
antiglobalist reaction comparable to the chauvinistic
paroxysms of the 1930s. Global terrorism is not the simple
extension of war among states to nonstates. It is the
subversion of traditional ways of war because it does not
care about the sovereignty of either its enemies or the
allies who shelter them. It provokes its victims to take
measures that, in the name of legitimate defense, violate
knowingly the sovereignty of those states accused of
encouraging terror. (After all, it was not the Taliban’s
infamous domestic violations of human rights that led the
United States into Afghanistan; it was the Taliban’s
support of Osama bin Laden.)
But all those trespasses against the sacred principles of
sovereignty do not constitute progress toward global
society, which has yet to agree on a common definition of
terrorism or on a common policy against it. Indeed, the
beneficiaries of the antiterrorist "war" have been the
illiberal, poorer states that have lost so much of their
sovereignty of late. Now the crackdown on terror allows
them to tighten their controls on their own people,
products, and money. They can give themselves new
reasons to violate individual rights in the name of common
defense against insecurity -- and thus stop the slow,
hesitant march toward international criminal justice.
Another main beneficiary will be the United States, the
only actor capable of carrying the war against terrorism
into all corners of the world. Despite its power, however,
America cannot fully protect itself against future terrorist
acts, nor can it fully overcome its ambivalence toward
forms of interstate cooperation that might restrict U.S.
freedom of action. Thus terrorism is a global phenomenon
that ultimately reinforces the enemy -- the state -- at the
same time as it tries to destroy it. The states that are its
targets have no interest in applying the laws of war to their
fight against terrorists; they have every interest in treating
terrorists as outlaws and pariahs. The champions of
globalization have sometimes glimpsed the "jungle"
aspects of economic globalization, but few observers
foresaw similar aspects in global terrorist and antiterrorist
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violence.
Finally, the unique position of the United States raises a
serious question over the future of world affairs. In the
realm of interstate problems, American behavior will
determine whether the nonsuperpowers and weak states
will continue to look at the United States as a friendly
power (or at least a tolerable hegemon), or whether they
are provoked by Washington’s hubris into coalescing
against American preponderance. America may be a
hegemon, but combining rhetorical overkill and ill-defined
designs is full of risks. Washington has yet to understand
that nothing is more dangerous for a "hyperpower" than
the temptation of unilateralism. It may well believe that the
constraints of international agreements and organizations
are not necessary, since U.S. values and power are all
that is needed for world order. But in reality, those same
international constraints provide far better opportunities for
leadership than arrogant demonstrations of contempt for
others’ views, and they offer useful ways of restraining
unilateralist behavior in other states. A hegemon
concerned with prolonging its rule should be especially
interested in using internationalist methods and
institutions, for the gain in influence far exceeds the loss in
freedom of action.
In the realm of global society, much will depend on
whether the United States will overcome its frequent
indifference to the costs that globalization imposes on
poorer countries. For now, Washington is too reluctant to
make resources available for economic development, and
it remains hostile to agencies that monitor and regulate the
global market. All too often, the right-leaning tendencies of
the American political system push U.S. diplomacy toward
an excessive reliance on America’s greatest asset --
military strength -- as well as an excessive reliance on
market capitalism and a "sovereigntism" that offends and
alienates. That the mighty United States is so afraid of the
world’s imposing its "inferior" values on Americans is often
a source of ridicule and indignation abroad.
ODD MAN OUT
For all these tensions, it is still possible that the American
war on terrorism will be contained by prudence, and that
other governments will give priority to the many internal
problems created by interstate rivalries and the flaws of
globalization. But the world risks being squeezed between
a new Scylla and Charybdis. The Charybdis is universal
intervention, unilaterally decided by American leaders who
are convinced that they have found a global mission
provided by a colossal threat. Presentable as an epic
contest between good and evil, this struggle offers the best
way of rallying the population and overcoming domestic
divisions. The Scylla is resignation to universal chaos in
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the form of new attacks by future bin Ladens, fresh
humanitarian disasters, or regional wars that risk
escalation. Only through wise judgment can the path
between them be charted.
We can analyze the present, but we cannot predict the
future. We live in a world where a society of uneven and
often virtual states overlaps with a global society burdened
by weak public institutions and underdeveloped civil
society. A single power dominates, but its economy could
become unmanageable or distrupted by future terrorist
attacks. Thus to predict the future confidently would be
highly incautious or naive. To be sure, the world has
survived many crises, but it has done so at a very high
price, even in times when WMD were not available.
Precisely because the future is neither decipherable nor
determined, students of international relations face two
missions. They must try to understand what goes on by
taking an inventory of current goods and disentangling the
threads of present networks. But the fear of confusing the
empirical with the normative should not prevent them from
writing as political philosophers at a time when many
philosophers are extending their conceptions of just
society to international relations. How can one make the
global house more livable? The answer presupposes a
political philosophy that would be both just and acceptable
even to those whose values have other foundations. As
the late philosopher Judith Shklar did, we can take as a
point of departure and as a guiding thread the fate of the
victims of violence, oppression, and misery; as a goal, we
should seek material and moral emancipation. While
taking into account the formidable constraints of the world
as it is, it is possible to loosen them.
Stanley Hoffmann is Buttenwieser University Professor at
Harvard University and a regular book reviewer for Foreign
Affairs.
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